Reflections on Dealey Plaza

Saturday I planned to spend my day visiting Dallas at the scene of one of the darkest chapters in my nation’s history.

I took my memories to a site that I had avoided for nearly 15 years since moving to North Texas. The pain was too real for the 12-year-old kid from the Ohio cornfields who still lives in me.

This was the day I planned to face the fear and move on.

Instead of finding comfort knowing that we have as a nation moved on from a sick and painful place, I found a new disturbing view of what we have become.

I heard at least a half-dozen languages spoken by visitors to Dealey Plaza. The world had come to see the place where in just a few seconds 50 years ago my world had spun into a confusing and scary place that no 12-year-old kid should ever see.

What I saw was no less confusing and scary than that awful day 50 years ago. The face that we chose to show the world there that day was schizophrenic and frightening.

Families were there with their children, people of my generation were there, all colors and lifestyles were there. Most seemed to be honoring a memory that was personal or related to them through their parents and grandparents.

Then, there were those who came to hurt, frighten and scar all others present.

Front-and-center was the Westboro Baptist Church, spewing the most vile, hateful and wrongheaded sort of bile imaginable.

Preaching that their god was even more hateful than themselves of any and all who had chosen sanity over some evil madness only they could fathom.

They were corralled in the center of the plaza by Dallas police and barricades to protect them from God knows what.

Across Elm Street, wandering among those who came to this powerful place were men carrying rifles and shotguns in full view. Not the scene that I had expected.

Here in Texas, I’m told it is perfectly OK to take your favorite long gun for a walk whenever and wherever you please. One person carried a rifle similar to the weapon that had brought us all to this sad place.

I felt anger, anxiety, sorrow, embarrassment and pity all at the same time that the best we could do during this week of remembrance was this display of intolerance and fear.

I don’t have an answer to what I saw there. I don’t even understand what would bring these people to a place that only exists because of fear and intolerance.

As a man just weeks short of his 63rd birthday, I could feel myself spinning again into that same confusing and scary place of my Ohio past.

There must be a way to bring us to remember that along with our rights we must also take responsibility to exercise them with clear thought, tolerance and common sense.

Today, I’m more confused, disheartened and fearful that we will soon again come face-to-face with those who know it only takes one small man to make my country the place where fear, ignorance, intolerance, self gratification and hate can thrive and flourish.

We must find a way to work with each other as individual human beings with respect and a spirit of compromise for the good of all of our brothers and sisters before ourselves.

We are a great people with the means to make this the kind of planet that cares more for doing right than for being right, and it’s time we started to behave as such.

Roger Scott lives in Fort Worth.